During the election of 1912 he ran as a third party candidate of the Bull Moose Party, losing to Woodrow Wilson (the other Nobel recipient).
Here is a campaign speech he recorded during the 1912 campaign.
Teddy Roosevelt: “The other day in a speech at Sioux Falls, Mister Wilson stated his position when he said the history of government, the history of liberty was the history of the limitation of governmental power. This is true as an academic stigma of history in the past. It is not true as a statement affecting the present.”
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(Woodrow Wilson - Last sitting President to get the Peace Prize)
When the Nobel Peace Prize was recently announced, and the recipient was none other than President Obama, people ran to their history books trying to figure out who was the last sitting President to receive such an honor.
If you've never heard him speak (and I suspect a lot of you haven't), here is a campaign address from the 1912 election, when he ran against the third party candidate Teddy Roosevelt (the other Peace Prize recipient - coming up shortly). He's speaking about the role of Labor.
When I woke up and opened my email box, I have to admit I first thought it was some sort of Onion spoof – Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize? Oh c’mon, where’s the punchline? But less than a half a cup of coffee later, I realized, bloody hell, this actually has happened!
Barack Obama, with less than a year in office, has won the Nobel Peace Prize, only the fourth US president to win it, after Teddy Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), and Jimmy Carter (2002), and the first sitting president since Wilson. Ostensibly, Obama has won it for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and specifically in recognition of his efforts to work toward a nuclear weapons-free world…
Well, obviously, they had to give it to him for a specific reason, and there’s certainly a lot of validity in the ones the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided on. But the Nobel Prize has always been political, which leaves it open to many who have complained about certain recipients in the past – Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger probably the most notable of controversial winners. However, Arafat’s and Kissinger’s detractors were their already sworn enemies, primarily Israel, so no real surprise there. But the instant denunciation of Obama’s worthiness has been, astonishingly enough, our own people. Our fellow Americans. Citizens of the United States who should be thrilled to bits Obama has won this incredible distinction and at a time when it is so crucial for America’s battered standing in the world community.
Larisa Alexandrovna, in her blog article, “Republicanistan - A country of its own” gives a great run-down on the scale of venomous spewing from the right, from Malkin’s spittle flecked incoherence to Limbaugh’s OxyContin and Viagra fuelled rage, along with all those who cheered when Chicago lost the Olympics, who have openly expressed the hope Obama’s policies will fail, regardless of how much that would hurt the country, those flag-waving, gun-toting patriots who have called for a military coup – a military coup! – to oust a legitimate and democratically elected leader of our own country. They must destroy the village to save the village. Their war on Obama takes no prisoners, even if the entire country itself should end up as a fatality.
Yet I would suggest that is it exactly these people – yes, these hate-mongering, stark raving loony-toon seething cabal of gibbering wingnuts at the head of the marching moronic army of stoopid peepul – who are directly responsible for Obama’s surprising win.
Tweety really let "Americans for Prosperity" President Tim Phillips have it on Hardball last night. Boy, he's really got a bug up his butt about health-care reform and he just won't let go:
MATTHEWS: "How do we get around the problem that there's so many people out there, and this is why we're having this debate, sir ... the question that's bothered the American people since, what? since Teddy Roosevelt's time, is some people have health insurance and some don't. How do we reconcile that with our sense in this country of looking out for each other, to some extent, to some extent."
"Here's my problem with you guys. The conservatives talk reasonably when the Democrats get in power and say 'well, we've got an alternative that's more free-market, it's less onerous, it's less big-shot, big-government stuff...' but when you guys are in power, you don't do anything on health care. And that's what happens, and that's why for, god, almost a century of foot-dragging on this, the Democrats get in power, whether it's Truman or it's Bill Clinton, or it's Hillary Clinton, or it's Barack Obama, they try something and it fails, because you guys are good at playing negative politics. You're really good at destroying Democrats plans, chances for reform..."
I've been reading a lot lately about this latest Salmonella scare, turning the somewhat sublime peanut into a thing of fear. It occurred to me that these scares, this tainted food seems to be something of a new plague in recent years.
And then I started thinking about Upton Sinclair, the eminent Muckraker of the early 20th Century, whose book "The Jungle" exposed the entire meat packing industry as a cesspool of filth, disease and corruption.
The fact that this iconoclast, this thorn in the side of Business, this pain in the ass of corrupt government was able to get the likes of President Roosevelt to establish The Food and Drug Administration as a legitimate watchdog for consumers as early as 1906 speaks volumes over the power of the press and progressive ideals and giving useful information to a receptive public.
Then as now, the power of the uncensored voice can still bring about change. Back in the early 20th century it was the unbiased and free press (a minority even then). Today it's the blogosphere. The forum has changed but the message is still the same.
So here is a clip of Upton Sinclair, talking about his early days and his run for Governor of California as a reminder of where we all came from.
